ELIZABETH » ESSEX	93
appeared upon the scene, and the ancient liberties of
Aragon were finally abolished, while seventy-nine of
the popular party were burnt alive in the market-
place, the ceremony beginning at eight in the
morning and ending at nine in the evening, by
torchlight.
The hectic hero of this affair was now leading the
life of an exile and an intriguer. He was obviously
a rogue, but he might, for the moment at any rate,
be a useful rogue ; and on that footing he had won
his way into the good graces of Essex and Henry.
He was active and unscrupulous; he was full of
stories that were infinitely discreditable to the King
of Spain, and he was master of an epistolary style of
Euphuistic Latin which precisely hit off the taste of
the great ones of that generation. How delightful
to weave plots, change policies, and direct the fate
of Europe in learned antitheses and elegant classical
allusions!
When the conclave at Essex House judged that
the time was ripe, a letter was despatched from the
Earl to Perez, hinting that, if Henry really wished
for Elizabeth's alliance, his best course was to
threaten to make peace himself with Spain. If
Juno was France and Philip the King of the Under-
world, was not the conclusion clear ? For who was
so ignorant as not to know that Juno, when she had
implored for help many times and in vain, had at
last burst out with—" Flectere si nequeo superos,
Acheronta movebo " ? " But silence, my pen!